


Doubt

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Crisis of Faith, Gen, POV Uriel (Good Omens), Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 04:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Heaven, with its empty walls, wide windows, vaulted ceilings, is too crowded. Uriel needs to be alone.





	Doubt

Uriel sat very, very still on the bench in St James’ Park. It was a warm, gently breezy day, and sometimes it tugged at her suit, or played through her hair. She felt both just the same: the suit she purported to wear was no different than her hair, merely an extension of the corporeal body she inhabited.

Gabriel and Sandalphon wore clothes, for real.

They bought expensive clothes, had them tailored to their bodies, looked at human clothes and gushed over their fashions. Gabriel loved the fabrics, invited other angels to stroke his sleeves or his trousers or the scarves he wore. Uriel had always refused. Sandalphon liked the different silhouettes, the colours, so many different shades of brown…

Michael wore clothes, too. She didn’t go to a tailor, or draw a lot of attention to it, didn’t flick through the magazines Gabriel occasionally looked at the pictures in[1], but she looked at the covers sometimes. She wore lace collars and lace sleeves; she wore pointed shoes and little pieces of jewellery; she sat sometimes in her office and she combed out her long hair, longer than most angels had theirs, touching it with her fingers, playing through the tresses, before she pinned it back up. Sometimes, Uriel watched her sitting in meetings, where she repositioned her hands, recrossed her legs, adjusted her posture – as if she was aware people might be looking at her, and wanted to look her best.

Vanity.

Vanity, and— and _physicality_.

Angels weren’t meant to be physical. Corporeal. They weren’t meant to inhabit a sleek, well-lit office, or sit at desks, even ethereal ones, like the ones in Heaven. They weren’t meant to inhabit bodies like this one, with all their… _sensations_. Their feelings.

Uriel remembered it vividly, as if she was still feeling it, so different to the holy, heavenly lightness of her sword in her hand, an extension of her ethereal body with just enough corporeal edge to lay waste to the demonic hordes…

( _The Fallen. Once, her brothers and sisters. She never forgot that, no matter that she tried.)_

It had felt different, the sudden punch of her knuckles against Aziraphale’s gut. His flesh had been so _soft_ , rounded out and encased in that fabric of his waistcoat, and yet it had yielded so easily to her force. She had felt the _satisfaction_ of it, the way Aziraphale had buckled, bent double, the noise he had made…

In the moment, there had been satisfaction. Pleasure.

Angels weren’t made to feel pleasure.

Angels weren’t made to feel, full stop.

And after the pleasure, fleeting, had come… uncertainty. The uncertainty, a niggling sensation that crept across her borrowed bones and tightened under her borrowed skin, had given way to regret. Not regret that she had punished a traitor, but that she had done it so wretchedly, with so little control, so little thought, that she had lashed out with her _fist_ , like a human—

She had felt self-doubt.

 _Doubt_.

Angels weren’t made for this.

So Uriel sat, in St James’ Park. She felt the wind on her skin, smelled the grass. She watched the human watching, going about their petty business, incognizant of the importance of the world about them, how small their parts were in it. She saw children playing, and listened to their laughter.

She sat there, doubting, for quite some time.

 

[1] Gabriel had never learned to read any of the human scripts, and the average printed sentence was an utter mystery to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). You can send requests [on Tumblr](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask), too. Requests always open. Check out [Fuck Yeah, Gabriel! too](https://fuckyeahgabrielgoodomens.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Remember that [the Tadfield Advertiser](https://tadfield-advertiser.dreamwidth.org/517.html) and the [Good Omens Prompt Meme](https://onthedisc.dreamwidth.org/9084.html) are both up and running, and people should definitely go leave prompts and fills on both!!


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